A Spotlight on Everyday People

The Creator

Dr. Kaia Niambi Shivers

Kaia Niambi Shivers has been living in Newark since 2007, and fell in love with the raw strength of its people and its profound history.

A professor at New York University, she and her husband, Duane Reed, an East Orange native, own Seventy Sixes Barbershop in downtown Newark, New Jersey. In 2013, they started The Grooming Blueprint, an initiative to provide grooming kits and classes to male youth in Newark.

In the years living in Newark, Shivers met incredible people with fascinating stories about creative, resilient, engaging, radical fierce, and sometimes humorous experiences and histories. Shivers, a researcher who focuses on the filmic activities of black Newarkers, wanted to capture as much as she could of the city, thus birthed The Brick 350.

But after the year’s festivities, Shivers decided to continue the blog, as it had such an impact on residents. Thus emerged, Ark Republic, on May 1, 2017, a multimedia outlet featuring the story of people through written, podcast and video narration.